This week got off to a slow start. I was demotivated by my performance last week. I had not run in over a week, and as a result I was dragging on monday. I was sure that I would not complete the workout. But on my 6th strideout all of a sudden I felt better and I completed the 8x:90s! That got me going for the week and by Saturday I went to the track for the first time and two years and had a good 2000 effort. Sunday Mike and Tim came by for the Farmersville-McKinney ride. These are guys I used to run with, but I have never ridden with them. They like to go fast, stay in line and rotate the front. That was fun - we smoked the ride with 19+ MPH ave Pace.

This was a tough week. First I had been nursing a cold and not taking care of myself. Tuesday I had to fly out to California for a two day strategy summit. I left the house Tuesday Morning at ODarkThirty and by the time I got to bed it had been a 22 hour day with no workout. Wednesday was just same, up early and full day schedule. Thursday I flew home, then I collapsed. And Friday I worked a half a day and then played in a golf scramble. So that is four zero workout days in a row. And I felt like crap the whole time. Saturday Logan had four soccer games, but I managed to squeeze in a quick ride in the morning. Sunday offered a bit more time on the bike, so I went and pre-rode the race course for the upcoming Run-Bi-Tri event.

I really needed to get the Easter beer in the bottle, so while I was doing that, I figured I might as well fire up another batch. That and the fact that I bought enough ingredients for a second batch when I did the Easter batch. Essentially the same recipe except that I reused the yeast from the Easter beer.

That was the last time I stepped on the track. Almost two years ago. Until today.

This morning I headed down to SMU to join Coach Vaughan and the group for my first track workout in two years. When I got there I found the group and they were almost done with their workouts and Coach Vaughan was no where to be found. It turned out that Coach Vaughan had a track meet and the rest of the knuckleheads decided to start early. But no one told me.

My other problem is that the workout schedule that Coach Vaughan had given me was completed and so I really was not sure which workout to do. Consulting my previous years schedules, I noted that in 2005 he started me with a 2000 meter trial.

Like two years ago, I was not sure exactly what pace I could run, and so I settled on a 84 pace. At the 200 meter mark I knew I was WAY ahead of pace. So I reined it in and when I got to 600 I knew I was about right and then picked up the effort. I stayed ahead of pace through 1200 and at 1600 I could tell I fell off a bit. But I felt great and was able to push the last lap.

I like surveys. I like statistics so I suppose that these two concepts are linked. Its not so surprising that I worked for AC Nielsen for all of those years. I also believe that there is no way one can improve without feedback. In athletics feedback is a no-brainer. It may take me five minutes to run around the track four times. I have my data point. If I want to run faster than five minutes then I know what needs to be done. In business its not often so obvious.

Yesterday I needed to collect some performance data from my team. I decided to check out two survey services for this task: SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang. I have used Zoomerang in the past, they have been around forever. Yesterday I had problems with service. Scripts stopped running and the connection timed out. Pretty freaking annoying. The likelihood is that our network was bogged down. But still they sucked. So I was forced to SurveyMonkey as my next best alternative. And the Monkey performed much better!

I wanted to use a ranking question, and I have to say that Zoomerang's implementation was much better than the Monkey. Too bad I could not get their site to work! The Monkey was flawless, and it gave me the data that I needed. As with all things, the many of the users did not fill out the survey correctly (this is where zoomerang was better - it prevented the users from doing stupid stuff.) But since I had access to the data, I was able Rambo all of the data into Excel for analysis.

The purpose of this exercise was to gather some data on team performance. As a manager I have my ideas of who is kicking butt and who is not. Working with a team where more than half the members are remote (based in India), sometimes I need to get some managerial perspective. I had each team member rank the top 12 members of the team. There are 28 members of the team. I then ranked the results in two ways. In the first method I looked at who got the most votes, where each vote had the same weight. This is a measure of popularity. And I also weighed each vote where a "1" vote was worth 12 points and a "12" vote was worth one point. This is a measure of perceived value, contribution or performance.

The results provided some surprising insight. I discovered at least one team member who was flying under my radar (Dave). I had considered his efforts average, while the team ranked him very highly. I'll need to pay closer attention to him!

I also had two sets of developers where the one developer 'won' the popular vote, but the other developer scored higher on contribution. Check out Steve verses Ed, Mark and Mike. And also Bob verse Tim and Paul. In some of these cases it was not as clear to me as it was to the team who was contributing more value to the project. Now I know where to point my managerial energy with these contributors.

While my friends were doing the Boston Marathon, I decided to hit the pool today. I'll be out of town tomorrow through Thursday, so Victoria will not have a chance to kill me. Since I'll most likely run the next three days, I figured I'd get some swim work in today. I have never actually done a full two miles, so that seemed like a good objective.

I jumped in the pool and goofed around through a 500 warmup. Then I knocked out 5 more 500's. And then I did 5-50's to go 3250 Meters, a tad over two miles.

It was a stressful week. I have been winding down my current project at work. Meanwhile I have two offers for my next role at BMC. While it's good to have a choice, it's also tough to decide. Thursday night I started to feel like I had a cold coming on. I tried to take it easy friday on my eight mile loop - In fact I went out with the idea that I would run 30 minutes, but I think with the stress it just felt better to do the full eight miles. Saturday morning was cold as hell and windy too. I hooked up with the Richardson Bike Mart (RBM) 905 ride. I caught the group coming down Renner road. They were going 30 MPH with the wind to our backs. It was crazy. I was immediately dropped, but I caught up with them when they had to stop at the light at NorthStar. I hung with them until the big hill on Pleasant Valley. That left three in front and three who got dropped. Me and one dude then traded back and forth in an effort to catch the front three. Finally I got blown up in Wiley. I limped back home and thawed out. Today was much warmer and much less wind. Since I will be out in California this week - which means no swimming when I am out there, so I'll probably have to run Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, since I usually run on Monday, I figured it was a lot of running next week so I should do a long bike ride today. As I type this, I am thinking that there is no reason that I can't swim tomorrow and break that up a bit. Which means I should have run to day. Oh well! Anyway, I chose to ride out to Farmersville and then along 380 to McKinney and back home. In the end it was around 53 miles. A variation on this ride. The wind was out the NW, and if I had been properly thinking I would have done the ride backwards - to McKinney first. But instead I suffered through the wind heading NE to Farmersville, the turned west and I was still going into the wind. I took an Accel Gel at Princeton and a few miles later my stomach was cramping bad. Wow - I'll never do that again. While I was limping down US 380 feeling sorry for myself, a mad Pit Bull Terrier charged out of a yard at me. I forgot my woes and started to hammer on the pedals. I looked down at my computer and I was going 25 MPH and the crazy hound was gaining on me! Sheesh! Luckily I outran him. I finally was able to make a pit stop in McKinney and that got me all fixed up for the rest of the ride home with the wind!

Monday through Thursday I was really sore from Sunday's Tri. Instead of doing intervals on Monday, I did a much lighter workout. My swimming workouts did not feel very strong either, although I got in lots of good work. I had been hoping to do a long bike ride during the three day weekend. Sadly it got REALLY cold and WINDY. In spite of that I sucked it up and biked on both Friday and Saturday. I did not go very as far, I just did my 30 mile loop both days. This loop goes due north for the first 13 miles and that just happenned to be straight into the cold wind. Saturday I rode solo. It was not as cold as Sunday but the wind was stronger, as you can see from the stats below. Sunday I rode with Terry, and it was 10 degrees colder and the wind, while strong, was still lighter than Saturday. Anyway it was nice to ride two days instead of one. Today I had a strong long run. The legs felt great after three days of no - running! I ran the loop in exactly the same time (86 min) as two weeks ago, with the same ave and max HR (146/156) and the same recovery (49 point drop in 2 min). Wow!

Like last time, I just threw the hops into the boil rather than use a hop sack. What a mess. I like the results, but the dang hops clog up my siphon tubes. I am going to need some more equipment apparently.

This is the elusive Coach Victoria, the swimming guru. Victoria is an Elite Triathlete. A women of many skills, she was the USAT official for the Keller event. In this photo she is laying out the pre-race instructions.

This is Yours Truly on the home stretch of the 5K.

And finally this me coming into transition on the bike. If you look carefully you can see that I have unstrapped my shoes, as I was fixin' to hop out of the shoes altogether and run through transition in my sox. What I failed to realize is that the shoes, while remaining clipped to the pedals would drag on the ground!

In some ways this might have been a matter of time. In what seems like eons ago, in September of 05 to be exact, Hassan had told us that Joe was on his last warning. Back then, the issue was Joe getting to the games. Since then Joe has been excellent about that. But the team has not been winning and some parents were complaining. In the end Hassan decided that Joe had not fulfilled his obligations as outlined by the club. This time I called Hassan (and Kenny Medina director of girls coaching) to support Joe.

As a result of all of that, we had four or five girls leave the team. That leaves us with 11 the number required for a full side. We have one more league game, which we will hopefully play with all 11 as we can't have any guest players. Then we will do some tournaments where we will hopefully be able to add some guest players.

Oh, and the new coach? His name is Cody Worden and at first blush he seems like a nice guy.

My efforts in March have built on the work I did in February. However, I had four zero effort days, and four days of skiing. Due to that all categories are down relative to February. In spite of that, my weight has been holding steady between 15 and 18 pounds lost since the Jan 1.

This was a pretty good week all in all. On Tuesday The Boss called me into a noon meeting so I missed swimming with the group. But I was able to head to the pool after work and Bob kindly gave me the workout. I missed my workout on Friday, as The Boss invited me to lunch. Given that I am in a transition mode at work currently, I figured the lunch thing was a good gesture. I had hoped to run Friday afternoon, but this big, huge, hairy thunderstorm rolled into town. Even then I thought I could get out to the Gym, but Logan's coach moved their practice to RISE in Rockwall. And that meant I had to pick up Marissa and Reagan after work. Oh well.

I had been toying with idea of doing the Keller Run-Bi-Tri on Sunday, so zero on Friday was a good rest day for Sunday's event.

Today I decided to suck it up and attempt the next race in the Run-Bi-Tri series. My last attempt at this format was a disaster. So it was with a bit or trepidation that loaded up the bike at O-Dark-Thirty and headed out to Keller Texas for the event.

I arrived in plenty of time and registered on site, got my bike racked up and then headed out on the return part of the run course. I ran out along the course for 7 and a half minutes then headed back. The part of the course that I ran was flat as a pancake but I did notice some hills rising above the left side of the path. They looked menacing and I thought they may foreshadow what was to come on the bike. However even with those thoughts I was completely unprepared for what was to happen next!

I got back the start line in time to do six 75 meter strides to complete my warmup. I then dumped my pants and laced up my flats and was ready to go. It was crisp and cool with very little wind. There was not a cloud in the sky. In short it was a spectacular morning.

The 5K had a uneventful but retarded start. Imagine an intersection and everyone is lined up facing north, but the race is going west. Its incomprehensible why they did not line everyone up facing west. After all the road was closed. Weird.

We all stared with the immediate hard left hand turn. I lined up a few people back but within 400 meters I had worked my way past most of the slower runners. There was a gap of 15 meters to the next runner in front of me and there were only a handful of runners in front of that dude. And that's pretty much how we raced. I was all alone from that point on. No one passed me. And I passed one or two 5K runners on the last mile.

We ran along the roads for the first mile, then we turned into a park and then out into a neighborhood. The road took a 90 degree turn to the east and I was shocked at what I saw. It was a huge hill. No it was a mountain. The sun was coming up right over the top of it which highlighted the beast. For the first two thirds it was a hard grade. The last third was like a cliff. In all of my years of road racing, I had never seen anything this steep. Unreal. The hill was three hundred meters long with a rise of 100 feet. For your reading pleasure I submit exhibit A, the topo map for Mount MotherEffer.

Exhibit A:

Thank god for long legs, as I am sure I made excellent time going down the back side. It turns out that where I turned around on my warm-up was just before the massive freaking hill from hell. Unreal.

My 5K split was 18:22 much slower than Allen, but Allen was flat.

[Editors Note: I was obviously brane-dead when I originally wrote this sentence. My Allen 5K was 19:03. That's a 41 second improvement in a month. And Allen did not have a mountain climb in the middle of its very flat run. My running is improving quickly. Thank you coach Vaughan! I finished the Keller run in fifth position among the triathletes (remember there was a simultaneous Duathlon and 5K run.]

I had strategically placed my bike as close to the bike-out as possible - minimizing the amount of distance needed to run in my bike shoes. My T1 was 56 seconds, the next to worse time in the top ten. The top master did it in :31, so I'll need to work on the transition. That said, I was :15 seconds faster than Allen.

Like Allen the bike course was a double looped affair. Unlike Allen I could not see anyone ahead of me. And I could not see any marks on the road. Thankfully a girl in the Duathalon came up on me and I was happy to let her by hoping that she knew where she was going. After a short while another guy came up and so the three of us traded leads. Then this big dude came zipping by AND he had a 47 on his leg which meant I needed to make sure to stay with him since he was in my age group. Up until that point I was pretty sure I was leading our AG. And I did my best to stay with that dude, but he got away. However, just before we headed into the second loop, we hit another set of hills. This hill was shorter than the run hill but still very steep and Mr. 47 was not doing well - in fact he got off his bike and walked the top of it. I was on the small chain ring and the big gear in the back and I stomped my way to the top. It was tough - but I made it. Allow me to submit exhibit B. This mountain features a 70 foot climb in 240 meters.

Exhibit B:

I hammered the second loop as best as I could and sure enough when we hit those hills the second time there was at least one other person on foot. Wow. Somewhere in the second loop Mr. 47 got by me again.

I headed home and was ecstatic that I completed the bike without going off course. I completed the bike in 38:53. The Polar CS200CAD reported a max velocity of 33.6 MPH with an average cadence of 99 RPM and a max cadence of 119 RPM.

I got through second transition in 1:01. If I could stomach running with out socks, that would really improve my T2 time! Anyway, as I ran out of the transition I realized that I still had my blades on - so I chunked them in the weeds. Then I got my goggles on as ran to the pool - that was a huge improvement on Allen, where I jumped into the pool with the goggles in hand, only to discover I was in the deep end! DOH! After the goggles, I ripped off my shirt and then I realized I still had my number belt on too - so I unclipped that and dumped both by the door to the pool. So yes the image you should visualize is me running from the bike to the pool throwing my gear off Wily-Nily in all directions!

This time I had made sure to understand the entrance, egress and course layout for the pool. Unlike Allen this was a beautiful 50 meter pool with lanes that must have been 18 feet wide. OK they were not 18 feet wide, but they were really, really wide. The swim was down and back one lane at a time which was great - everyone in the lane was going the same direction. On my second length I passed my first swimmer. Then I got another just as I was being passed. We were swimming three wide and there was tons of room. Amazing. Love it. I got to the end, quickly got out and sprinted to to mat. My swim time was 7:49 much better than the 8:29 at Allen.

As I was collecting the gear that I had thrown hither and yon, I noticed Mr. 47 crossing the mat! He must of been one of the guys that I had passed in the pool.

I ended up with 1:06:59 compared to a 1:21:59 in Allen. More importantly I moved up from 31st to 10th overall, from 11th master to 3rd master, and from second in my age group to first (Mr 47 got second place). This was my first age group win and my first top 10 finish recorded during my short Triathlon career. I think I am on the right track!

Update April 3: My run was 41 seconds faster than Allen not slower as I had originally written. Duh!

All views expressed in this post and on this blog are my own. None of my comments should be construed to represent the views of others including and not limited to: BMC Software Inc., Corel Corporation, Dun and Bradstreet and AC Nielsen. Copyright Chris Hughes 2004-2012